Personal cleansing compositions must satisfy a number of criteria to be acceptable to consumers. These criteria include cleansing power, skin feel, mildness to the skin, hair, and occular mucosae. Ideal personal cleansers should gently cleanse the skin or hair, causing little or no irritation and without leaving the skin overly dry or taut after frequent use.
One approach to personal cleansing is to utilize surfactants to aid in the removal of dirt, oil, and debris (e.g., make-up). However, with surfactant-based cleansing systems, a trade-off exists between mildness and cleansing and lathering ability. The most effective cleansing and lathering surfactants tend to be the harshest and most irritating. On the other hand, surfactants that are known to be mild tend to have the drawback of poor cleansing and lather performance compared to the highest bar soap standards (e.g., coconut soaps). One solution to this problem has been to attempt to find a middle ground by balancing the surfactant system for mildness and cleansing and lathering ability.
Another approach to personal cleansing is to utilize solvents and emollients to aid in the removal of dirt, oil, and debris. Even though solvents and emollients are effective cleansers, these materials have the disadvantage of being more difficult to remove by rinsing and of tending to leave the skin with a coated, greasy feel. Also, most solvents and emollients have low water solubility which means that they must either be used in an anhydrous system or formulated with a high solvent level to provide effective cleansing.
Yet another approach to personal cleansing is to rely on the physical abrasion of suspended particles to remove oil, dirt, and other debris. A wide variety of cleansing compositions containing abrasive particles are known in the marketplace, but these compositions suffer from the disadvantage of giving an unpleasant sensation of scratchiness to the user, or even worse, of actually damaging the skin by abrading it. In fact many abrasive scrub products are perceived as too harsh and irritating for everyday use.
Therefore, it is seen that conventional surfactant based cleansers, emollient and solvent cleansers, and cleansers utilizing abrasive particles all suffer from disadvantages. Clearly, a need exists to develop personal cleansing compositions which provide effective skin cleansing benefits without the disadvantages of harsh surfactants, heavy emollients and solvents, and overly abrasive particles.
It has been surprisingly found in the present invention that highly efficacious cleansing gel compositions can be prepared which utilize certain small diameter micronized particles to achieve improved cleansing efficacy. In these compositions the polymer particles are of such a size as to be below the tactile perception threshold of the user (i.e. the particles cannot be felt during the cleansing process). Without being limited by theory, it is believed that these small particles are still large enough to physically provide a cleansing benefit by helping to lift away dirt, oil, and other debris. It has been found herein that polymeric particles having a mean particle size diameter from about 1 micron to about 75 microns are most useful for this purpose and permit the formulation of non-abrasive, non-irritaing cleansing products, which are ideal for daily use. It has also been found that particular attention must be given to ensuring that the particles employed do not have a significant percentage of particles above about 75 microns.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide non-abrasive personal cleansing compositions useful for cleansing the skin and hair.
It is another object of the present invention to provide personal cleansing compositions in the form of an aqueous gel utilizing insoluble micronized particles such that the compositions have good cleansing ability without irritating or abrading the skin.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a method for cleansing the skin or hair.
These and other objects of this invention will become apparent in light of the following disclosure.